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"Case Closed" - No Health Benefits from Multivitamins

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by MadMax, Dec 17, 2013.

  1. RC Cola

    RC Cola Contributing Member

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    I don't follow this logic.

    Why is this necessary if they are just trying to get a sample of the population at large?

    I've only skimmed over the details, but these 3 studies seemed like they were designed OK to me (and the researchers did point out potential flaws in their designs, which I already mentioned).
     
  2. Severe Rockets Fan

    Severe Rockets Fan Takin it one stage at a time...

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    Because everything I mentioned have a huge impact on overall health. What you eat, what you do for a living, and how much you workout in life have a BIG impact. Not sure why that's hard to follow. If any of these are different between subjects...which they most probably are...then how can you prove multivitamins had some 'effect' on their health if you can't compare identical lifestyles?

    If a dude worked in the oilfields or construction all his life, and was in great shaped...ate great food, but never took vitamins and compared him to someone who programmed computers and had a very sedentary lifestyle while drinking tons of Dr. Pepper and munched on cheetos all day (yum!) but took vitamins...how can you say vitamins don't matter simply because the programmer got diabetes or cancer and died earlier than the roughneck? It's silly and wrong. But the point is we don't know what categories of people they compared and what they did in life...hell we don't know what they all ate, drank, lived, how the exercised, how many drugs they did or didn't take, etc. except for what they remembered they took or wanted to reveal they took/did.

    Studies like these take a broad group of people over decades and try to pretend like "case closed" this is an end all be all study, but backpedal with terms like "well noutrished" without giving any explanation for their jargon. It's good if you want to say multivitamins don't show any signs of making alcoholics healthier, or obese people live longer, or help people that eat horrible, smoke, and live sedentary lifestyles get heart disease less...etc. But if you eat more healthy food in addition to all those bad habits it would probably have the same lack of health benefits as well.

    IMHO yes, eating "healthy" would be the best route to take as the study tries to say, but most folks don't have time to ensure that their diets have every daily recommended vitamin and mineral through a day's eating schedule. That's the whole point of taking multivitamins...because most people can't do everything that makes us 100% healthy all the time, most of us are just trying to get by...and taking 10 seconds to take a pill that gives us the vitamins and minerals of most of your vegetables and fruits in a day does seem like it would help instead of denying our bodies of those nutrients...doesn't it?
     
  3. wizkid83

    wizkid83 Contributing Member

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    [​IMG]

    That twice a day, and 2 cans of coke (and some filtered water). That was my basic diet in college for a year. It was cheap and efficient. Let's say that's my diet, would I get scurvy if I don't take Vitamin C? That's the kind of stuff I want to see in the studies they do.

    Edit: Just looked up the nutritional information, I think there's about 7 mg Vitamin C in each burrito so I was fine (did no take supplements in college). Now, let's say that's still my diet, what's the cheapest and most efficient way to ingest nutrients from a healthy diet?
     
    #63 wizkid83, Dec 19, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2013
  4. mikus

    mikus Member

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    Studies have shown that high doses of zinc can reduce or lessen the severity of colds. Additionally, some broad population surveys have indicated that up to 50% of US adults are at least mildly deficient in Vitamin D, which can lead to various bone problems.

    I know that earlier this year I was diagnosed with an extremely severe Vitamin D deficiency that led my doctor to have to prescribe me 3 months worth of the 50K IU megadose and at the end of that I only tested barely at the normal level. Adults who are lactose intolerant and do not drink milk daily run a risk of having Vitamin D deficiency. I've been borderline iron deficient as well at times, and I really notice that because when I am iron deficient, I seem to get cold much easier.

    Personally, I have noticed that when I follow a nutrition plan(I am pre-diabetic so I have a nutritional plan that I try to follow), I feel much more energetic. If I am eating poorly then I can get a similar boost from taking some vitamins.

    I can easily believe that additional supplements will not help you if you are already eating a very healthy and balanced diet. However, that is non-trivial to do and I bet most adults do not most of the time. My advice would be to make sure you get regular checkups with your doctor and ask for some additional blood work such as the Vitamin D check and then follow your doctor's recommendations.

    Bottom line, your body does need it's vitamins and if you are deficient, then you should take some supplements. I think these studies do a great disservice to the public by implying that everyone is well-nourished and that deficiencies are something that is uncommon in the US.
     
  5. RC Cola

    RC Cola Contributing Member

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    If that's the case, why bother with a vitamin? ;)

    I mostly agree with this, but I think you're wrong about the studies. They do provide details on the "subjects" in the studies. In one study, they were all men, 65 years or older, same/similar jobs, etc. I don't have full access to all the studies, but I would expect that they kept track of and controlled for these variables when possible. Again, they didn't spend all this time and money for nothing.

    Plus, with the large, randomized sample size, this tends to become less of a problem. You will have healthy people vs unhealthy people, but they'll likely be split into both groups evenly. If vitamins were helpful, then one group would have better results than the other. But from the results, it appears the two groups had similar results (indicating routine supplementation had little to no impact).

    FWIW, this type of study is done for a number of other things, and in those cases, we DO see significant impacts to the thing being tested. It is impossible to check for all the different permutations (do vitamins work in women over 30? what about over 40? men living in California? etc.), but we really don't need to. I don't see why vitamins should be exempt from this. In fact, if we suppose that these types of studies are poorly designed, we would still need to see benefits from vitamins in a "properly" designed trial before the evidence indicated vitamins were worth it. Good luck finding 5000 clones to study for 10+ years (and hopefully they all experience the same things in life).

    The goal isn't to show vitamins have no effect, but to show vitamins DO have an effect (and preferably a significant one so biases can be ruled out). Numerous studies have attempted to do so, and so far, there hasn't been much to support routine supplementation.

    Arguing semantics a bit (what does "eating more healthy food" mean?), but I don't agree with this.

    You are assuming the problem with people's diets are that they aren't getting enough nutrients. That might not be the case.

    As I said earlier, people who eat more fruits and vegetables might be getting health benefits that aren't necessarily tied to the nutrients in those foods.

    I don't think "most folks" actually fall into a category where they are not receiving appropriate nutrition (at least in regards to nutrient intake). Thus, taking a vitamin likely won't fix anything, and it will likely give them an excuse to continue with their poor diet.
     
  6. RC Cola

    RC Cola Contributing Member

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    That diet seems pretty poor for a number of reasons (is that ~1000 calories a day?). Lack of nutrients might not be the only one (perhaps not even the biggest one, as you sort of pointed out).

    There might be studies on what is the most "efficient" diet, but that is kind of hard to nail down, and honestly, kind of pointless. Some foods are cheaper and more nutritional than others, but they taste horrible. So few people rarely stick with them, especially day after day. Certainly a diet that contains lots of fruits and vegetables, minimal "junk" food, etc., will result in something pretty healthy (in terms of providing nutrients, proper calories, more good stuff, less bad stuff, etc.) and likely cost efficient. But I don't know the exact answer. I'd recommend talking to a doctor if you wanted to work out a cost efficient diet that also was good for your health (not just in nutrients, but all the other things I mentioned).

    Somewhat off-topic, but I think results have generally been pretty mixed about this. Some have shown small benefits, while others have been inconclusive. Given the potential negative side-effects to zinc, however, I'm not sure I'd really recommend it to people though, especially if it just means recovering slightly faster to a cold.

    I agree with part of this, but it is not clear to me that deficiencies are that common in the US.

    I will agree that vitamin D deficiency seems to be a problem (vitamin D is perhaps the one exception to most of this), and I would like more research on that (it is possible that supplementation of vitamin D might not help much, even with people experiencing vitamin D deficiency).

    Bottom line, definitely go to a doctor and get checked out if you are worried you might have a deficiency. In those cases, a decision can be made about whether you require certain supplementation (ideally you would just eat better, but that isn't always enough or possible).



    People might be sick of me posting his blogs, but I recommend reading the following from Steve Novella (again, he's much better at articulating this than I am):
    http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/ok-but-should-i-take-a-vitamin/
     
  7. KingCheetah

    KingCheetah Contributing Member

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    <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lhk7-5eBCrs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

    :)
     
  8. SWTsig

    SWTsig Contributing Member

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    Your mom definitely doesn't think my D is deficient!

    :burnsauce
     
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